24–Carat Venison

Advice
on preparing gold-standard meals from prime cuts of deer and elk meat. By Tom Dickson

This story is featured in Montana OutdoorsNovember–December 2008

When the hunting season ends, I like to open our freezer and gaze at those
tidy white packets of wrapped venison, stacked on the shelves like bricks
of gold. And considering what farm-raised venison sells for these days, it
has become the meat equivalent of 24-carat bullion. Specialty game shops
across the country charge up to $55 a pound for loin chops and other choice
cuts of farm-raised venison (tougher cuts such as shoulder run sub­stantially
less, though still far more than beef or even lamb). Using an average of
$20 a pound, I figure each doe I harvest provides my family with meat that
would cost a nonhunter $1,000 or more. Those prices make king crab legs and lobsters look like items in the food
bargain bin.

Why the high premium on venison? First, deer, elk, and antelope meat is
good for you. Venison is low in calories, cholesterol, and fat, especially
the saturated kind. It’s also high in iron and vitamin B-12. Many people
consider venison the original free-range, organic meat.

Second, wild venison is good for the environment. I don’t know about domestically
raised deer and elk, much of it grown in New Zealand, but the whitetails
and pronghorn I harvest each fall tread with a gentle hoofprint on the landscape.

Third, nonhunters pay top dollar for venison because they consider it a
rare treat, a meat purchased from specialty shops or in fine restaurants.
(That comes as a surprise to people who grew up eating deer, elk, and antelope
meat and consider it everyday fare.)

Finally, there’s the taste. I eat grass-fed beef and locally raised lamb,
and occa­sionally dive into a rack of barbecued pork ribs. But if restricted
to just one meat, it would be that of a bottomlands whitetail doe. A trimmed
raw venison steak in the hand smells as fresh as a cool fall morning. When
cooked, it becomes delicately textured and finely flavored. I’m not alone
in my praise. Chefs throughout the world extol venison’s culinary virtues.

Like beef, there are basically two categories of venison cuts: tough and
tender. Each requires a different, and completely opposite, cooking technique.
The article “Venison Alchemy” (November–December 2007) covered shanks, shoulders,
and other tough cuts. It explained how the combination of moist heat, low
temperature, and long cooking is essential for breaking down tough tissue
and creating succulent, fork-tender dishes. What follows are recommendations
for cooking the prime cuts—steaks, roasts, and medallions from the upper
rump and the loin (the two long cylinders of meat, also known as the backstrap,
on either side of the spine).

In many respects, cooks can view venison as they do beef. Both are the dark
red meat of large grazing animals. And the cuts from both grazers are similar:
A sirloin of venison is a steak that comes from the lower back of the animal,
as does beef sirloin.

But that’s where the deer and the cow part company—and where cooks need
to understand the fundamental differences between the two. Beef fat is tasty
and marbled throughout the meat. Venison fat, on the other hand, tastes like
boiled or burned leather when cooked. It exists only on the outside of the
meat, primarily over the lower back and rump, and always should be trimmed.

Lacking veins of fat within the meat, uncooked venison has less moisture
than beef. Though less fat content makes a serving of venison steak one-half
leaner than a similar-sized beef steak, it also causes venison to dry out
when cooking, requiring the use of cooking oils.

Many chefs and restaurant diners maintain that venison has more flavor
than beef. Heavy with fat, beef has a mild, rich taste. Lacking fat, venison
is tangier and more intense. That sweet tang comes from abundant capillaries
in the muscle, providing the blood that gives raw venison steaks their rich,
burgundy color. Blood is sweet; if you accidentally prick your finger and
suck it, you can taste that sweetness. Chefs try to retain the sweet taste
of venison by not overcooking the meat.

The longer you cook venison, the more bitter it becomes. That’s what many
people call the “gamey” taste. It’s the same bitterness that comes from overdone
liver, compared to the sweet taste of liver cooked just briefly at a high
temperature.

The key to preserving venison’s sweetness? Cook all tender cuts quickly
at high heat.

My five favorite recipes for prime venison follow on the next page. With
these and other choice-cut dishes, an essential first step is to remove all
fat and “silver skin”—the white connective tissue running through the meat.
When in doubt, cut off anything that’s white.

Also, keep in mind that the gold-standard recipe for any choice cut is
to simply season it with salt and pepper and grill or sauté the meat in olive
oil for several minutes on each side. No sauces. No marinades. Just the sweet
taste of venison.